Word: bremer
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...first flew into Iraq just about the time Jerry Bremer took over as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, during the third week of May 2003. I took a helicopter ride with Jerry right over Baghdad. It was daylight. The helicopter door was wide open, and I was looking out as we flew. On the ground, the environment was strikingly permissive, considering that a foreign army had just invaded the capital and deposed the country's long-term dictator. People were going out, eating in restaurants. You half expected to see double-decker buses rolling down the main...
...Bremer made two decisions in 2003, Tenet alleges, that opened the doors to the insurgency that plagues Iraq today. And kept the CIA in the dark about both...
...Although he was a presidential envoy, Bremer would report directly to the secretary of defense. His organization was given the title Coalition Provisional Authority. Once CPA had been established, Condi Rice ordered the interagency committee that had been constituted to deal with postwar planning issues to fold its tent. It was only a short while later, however, that, as one White House official told me, "The shit hit the fan and we had to rely on the British to tell us what was going on because we were getting no political reporting out of CPA." Rice then ordered...
...Since L. Paul Bremer handed over authority, the Iraqi government has done a terrible job of, well, governing. The thin bench of Iraqi politicians is made up mostly of rich exiles like the Pentagon-backed Ahmed Chalabi, Iran-funded Islamists and, well, just straight up crooks. There has yet to emerge an Iraqi prime minister who stayed in Iraq while Saddam was in power. First there was the U.S.-backed Ayad Allawi, who was widely perceived among Iraqis as a CIA patsy and whose defense minister oversaw the disappearance of more than $1 billion during his eight-month tenure. Then...
...like the U.S.-led coalition has done any better. (It was Bremer, after all, who did irreparable damage by disbanding the Iraqi Army and bungling the post-war reconstruction.) Operation Together Forward, which was announced with great fanfare in June 2006, was totally ineffective at quelling the sectarian killings. The Iraqi police training has been a case study in inefficiency, poor planning and the U.S. government's consistent reluctance to invest the money and resources needed into any task in Iraq...